Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Headlines - Wednesday February 8

Looks like Karen Handel will be packing up her desk (novelty coffee mug, Jesus riding a dinosaur Precious Moments statue, stolen office supplies emblazoned with pink ribbons) because a job may be opening at the Komen Foundation very soon.

"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the decision. The court concludes that the law violates the 14th Amendment rights of gay couples to equal protection under the law. Access to gay marriage will remain on hold pending appeals to the decision.

Man, first that jackwagon Handel gets fired, and now this!

Woo hoo!

###

###

The Christianists who want it to be legal for their children to assault and harass LGBT kids have now focused their ire on Rolling Stone, who last week published a lengthy expose of a Minnesota school system.

According to Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute, teachers should not be allowed to intervene when gay children are being beaten:

Teachers are employees of the government. In that role, they have no right to affirm controversial moral beliefs, even if they believe that doing so will reduce the incidence of bullying. There are ways to curb bullying without affirming controversial, non-factual moral (or political assumptions). Schools must ensure that teachers not exploit their government-subsidized employment to engage in moral or political philosophizing. To prevent the kind of ideological propagandizing in which homosexual activists and their allies seek to engage in the classroom, policy must explicitly prohibit teachers from expressing their personal views on controversial issues.

NOTE: The Illinois Family Institute is an SPLC-certified hate group and the former employer of Peter LaBarbera.

Mitt Romney's five sons -- Matt, Tagg, Craig, Ben and Josh -- are sitting pretty with a trust fund worth $100 million. Getting there took investments that produced great growth, according to the Romney campaign. It also took smart tax strategies. Romney and his wife Ann have been giving to the boys since 1995, and, according to a spokesperson for the Romney campaign, all of their contributions have been below gift-tax contribution limits.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and several other lawmakers say the U.S. should consider arming the opposition forces in Syria as President Bashar al-Assad continues to kill civilians in a government crackdown.

Graham cautioned that before arming the opposition, he would want to know that they have a plan to govern "so that we don't just have another civil war."

"That is probably where we are headed, is giving the opposition forces capacity, humanitarian aid, medical aid and maybe even military assistance," Graham said Tuesday. "Before arming them I would want to know what efforts have they made to put together a governing coalition."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, also told reporters Tuesday that "we should start considering all options, including arming the opposition. The blood-letting has got to stop."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Ct.) made similar comments on Sunday, suggesting at a conference in Munich that the U.S. should ultimately provide the opposition with weapons.

Lieberman, McCain, and Graham are a domestic axis of evil- there is literally no worldwide situation that, according to them, can't be made better with American guns and bombs.

###

"Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations---usually referred to as the 'Republican Base'---pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday."

It's official: Barack Obama has decided — not for the first time — that leading by example is just too risky.

On January 27, 2010, in one of the most celebrated moments of his presidency, Obama stood in the rostrum of the U.S. House and called out to their faces the five members of the Supreme Court who had ruled six days earlier that the federal government has no authority to limit the independent political activity of corporations and unions.

***

But all of that abruptly changed last night, with word that Obama has decided to give in and play the Super PAC game just as aggressively as his Republican opponents. As the New York Times reports:

Aides said the president had signed off on a plan to dispatch cabinet officials, senior advisers at the White House and top campaign staff members to make clear to donors that they should support Priorities USA Action, the leading Democratic "super PAC," whose fund-raising has been dwarfed by Republican groups. The new policy was presented to the campaign's National Finance Committee in a call Monday evening and was set to be announced Tuesday.

"Dwarfed" is definitely the right word. Fund-raising reports released last week showed that the pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC Restoring Our Future has outraised Priorities USA by more than seven-to-one. And that's just one component of the Republican Super PAC arsenal. Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who has given $10 million to a Newt Gingrich-aligned group, is sending signals that he'll move his support to Romney if the former Massachusetts governor is Obama's fall opponent, while a Super PAC launched by Karl Rove has taken in more than $50 million.

It's not good enough that Obama win re-election, he has to do it with one hand tied behind his back. We went through this crap in 2008 with public financing, and I imagine we will be hearing kvetching from the usual suspects for a while about this.

Look- I wish Super PACS didn't exist. I wish politicians weren't as beholden to monied interests and slaves to raising campaign cash. I really do. But that is the reality we live in, and I'm not going to hamstring my candidate and demand he play by different, tougher rules.

###

"I predict, gentlemen, that in 200 years, this Constitution will be so misinterpreted by the Roberts Court that we may as well have stayed home and filleted our kumquats."

###

"Go ahead, right-wing punk, diss my ad and make my day!"

###

In its comprehensive examination of federal disclosure forms, the Washington Post has discovered that members of Congress have steered millions of taxpayer dollars to institutions where their relatives work. The Post found 16 representatives whose actions aided their immediate families.

Have you ever wished that Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert would stop and take some time to explain what makes caribou want to hump? Sure you have. Here you go: "So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the [oil] pipeline," he says, and you can imagine the rest. HINT in case you can't: it involves "warm oil" and "flowing." In conclusion, America needs to build thousands more oil pipelines in Alaska, to make caribou horny. READ MORE »

####

One unfortunate Mitt Romney supporter in Florida seems to have discovered a novel way of getting kicked out of a campaign event: Alan Reynolds showed up to a Mittens rally with a sign bearing the (mysterious?) collection of words, "Tea Party Includes Cuban Coffee Romney." NOT COOL, said Romney campaign staff. Because Mitt Romney does not drink coffee. It is against his magick moon religion. Therefore this hilarious nonsense phrase must be kept away from Mitt AT ALL COSTS and Reynolds was told to leave. No, we don't understand it, either! Does Mitt Romney melt away like the Wicked Witch if he so much as reads one of the special Mormon naughty words?

That's one theory. The other conclusion one might draw is that Mitt Romney's campaign staff does not know how to properly interpret teabagger signage, ha ha:

[Reynolds] thought his sign would be well received at an event with a few hundred mostly Hispanic supporters and a heavily Cuban flavor — including a heap of lechón.

But he may have touched off trouble with his other signage, a piece that read: "No Newt-ist Colony on the Moon, Vote Romney."

"They saw the word, 'Newt," and thought I was a Gingrich supporter," Reynolds says.

To smooth things over, he tried to demonstrate his Romney support by showing off his Cuban coffee masterpiece:

​That's when things really got bizarre, with the staffers bringing up Mormonism's ban on drinking caffeine. "I said, 'This sign is clever!,'" he says. "They said it was offensive because he's Mormon."

Anyone caught drinking coffee in Mitt Romney's White House will be sent to Mormon baptize dead popes, as punishment. [Miami New Times]